


Blessed

by JulyStorms



Series: Let the World Burn Through You [11]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 22:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6348505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their relationship is more complicated than it initially appears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blessed

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Harblkun on Tumblr: 13. in the storm, 12. believe, 34. good enough, and 26. tactile with "the usual" which right now means this pairing. Oops.
> 
> A huge round of applause for Harblkun who helped edit this for sensibility and consistency (which it desperately needed), and special thanks to Amielleon, probably completely unbeknownst to her.
> 
> "When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed."  
> –Maya Angelou

The prisoners, which had numbered eleven the day of capture, numbered only seven, now. Though the rain had been continuous and cold, the four dead captives hadn’t taken ill; instead, they’d been stupid enough to struggle, to speak. Rinkah wasn’t the least bit surprised to see them cut down. Not knowing their names had made it easier to watch, but she’d still strained against the ropes that held her arms behind her back--angrier than she ought to have let herself be. Surely a large group of Nohrian soldiers could overlook one snide comment made by an unarmed prisoner!

Still, she’d reined it in, forced her shoulders to relax; anger had gotten her in this idiotic mess to begin with. The jokes about her hot temper, while irritating, were not entirely unfounded. She always fought with anger and knew no other way than to let it fuel her reckless charge into battle. Anger was a tool as any other, after all—and she used it to its full advantage. With anger clouding her mind, she wouldn’t have to think—not about anything irrelevant, like if the soldier she was about to kill in cold blood had a gaggle of kids at home. If she wasn’t thinking soft thoughts like that, she could do her job right, and a job done right meant the alliance with Hoshido was secure.

But she had been too angry, two weeks ago, and it should have gotten her killed. For a blessed while she had thought herself quite dead, but then she had woken up a prisoner.

Death would have been less humiliating, but she was not the sort of person who could act stupid on purpose when doing so would surely get her killed; she kept her jaw locked tight and ignored the other prisoners when she saw them at first. Nobody was going to be able to accuse her of planning anything. The only thing more humiliating than being captured would be dying a nearly-defenseless prisoner.

Kaze had no such reservations about communicating. She heard him before she saw him, felt her stomach tense painfully at the recognition, but she learned how to ignore him, too. Sort of. It was hard to ignore the only other prisoner she knew, and harder still when he was the most likely of all of them to be privileged with information.

“How did you get captured?” she hissed at him the first night, irritated that she would probably have to watch him die later.

“Careless mistake,” was all he said, and she could almost imagine his apologetic smile was directed toward her instead of himself.

But he didn’t know her well enough to know that it would hurt a little to lose him, and so she ignored it as staunchly as anything else, expression fixed into a frown. 

He didn’t seem to mind. “You?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

He let it drop, either quite aware already of how she’d gotten captured or kind enough not to press; she wasn’t sure which she preferred.

He didn’t speak to her again until two days had passed and then it was just to say, “We’re headed to the capital.”

She swallowed hard. “How do you know?”

“I asked.”

“They could be lying.”

“I think not.”

“Of course.” She bit her tongue, chewed on it for a bit. “Did you tell anyone else?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Should I?”

She wasn’t sure. Maybe. She shrugged.

He told them. By the end of the day, two were dead. He blamed himself, probably. It seemed like the sort of thing he’d do.

She hated herself immediately for making the observation; she wasn’t supposed to know anyone that well, wasn’t supposed to be able to read him so easily. She swallowed a smidgen of her pride to say, roughly, “Look, at least they had a choice.”

He was silent for a long moment, and she thought about how awkward he looked with his wrists bound as hers were. “What will you do?” he asked her when the silence started seemed to grow heavy between them.

“Not that,” was all she could tell him. Spitting in a scumbag’s face, even if they _were_ a member of the Nohrian military, was not worth dying for, but there was an odd sense of security in knowing that pissing off the guards and getting oneself killed was an option.

Before the first week of travel ended, two more prisoners had died, perhaps similarly. Rinkah had no way of knowing for certain as she only barely paid attention to the others, but nobody knew what was waiting for them in Nohr’s capital. The prospects were, at best, grim, and a source of constant anxiety. She would not be surprised if they had decided that a quick execution en route was preferable to learning what awaited them at their destination. Surely their treatment in the capital would be worse than their current fare: marching through the rain with nothing to eat but gruel they were expected to lap up like dogs.

Rinkah turned her nose up at their sorry excuse for food for the first two days. Though her stomach desperately wanted anything she could offer it—and made that known by loudly protesting her refusal to eat—her pride was incensed that their captors wouldn’t untie her hands so that she could eat properly.

“You’ll die if you don’t eat,” Kaze told her. “Are you trying to ensure a slow death for yourself?”

“I’m not a dog,” she said, stomach aching.

But two more days passed before her resolve crumbled and her survival instincts took over. The guards on duty laughed and watched her eat. Rinkah silently hoped that she would be granted a chance to die in a blaze of glory instead of in this slow slump of humiliation.

* * *

 

Rinkah and the only other woman in the group were herded into a cell together almost the moment they reached Nohr’s capital. Kaze reached for her without thinking and brushed his fingers over her bare arm to get her attention. She turned, slightly, her expression stiff--but he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see the apprehension in her eyes.

“Be careful,” he said, more gently than he intended to. As if it would do any good—as if it could change anything.

He ended up in a cell at the far end of the corridor with the remaining prisoners.

"You think they’ll be all right?” one man asked later, trying to peer down the hall from the barred front gate; he retreated back inside when it seemed to do him no good.

One of the men slouching against the back wall lifted his eyebrows in surprise: “You think  _we’ll_  be all right?” he returned.

 _Probably not_ , Kaze answered silently. Everyone else evidently had the same thought, for the conversation instantly died.

But Kaze understood the first man’s concern: having never been a prisoner of war, he honestly had no true knowledge about how they were to be treated--or if female prisoners would be treated differently. There were rumors, of course, but it was best not to dwell on them; rumors were not solid fact.

And just because a general or two of Nohr was notorious for their cruelty or mistreatment of prisoners didn’t mean that they would have any particular power or sway in the capital.

The first couple of days passed uneventfully. They were untied and fed, and the fare, while unusual-looking, was at least edible and certainly better than runny gruel. The lack of privacy was expected, as was the constant smell of body odor and piss. They were hardly guests, after all.

The sound of Rinkah’s stomach, however, while a familiar sound by now due to her early refusal to eat, came as a bit of a surprise.

“Do you think they’re even feeding them?” someone asked him.

“I assume the same as us.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s eating it, I guess. Stubborn.”

“Perhaps.”

But while the Nohrians’ offered food was very nearly adequate for the average prisoner, it was probably only enough to make someone like Rinkah, who was clearly used to a much heavier diet, hungrier. She was probably eating it; it just wasn’t enough.

The sound of her dissatisfaction echoed with enough regularity to make him feel something like pity for her predicament, but it wasn’t as if he could share his food with her, and so he pushed the feeling aside. She would not want his or anyone else’s pity, anyway, let alone their charity.

He focused his attention on waiting to see what would become of them, instead.

He didn’t have to wait long. They were to be gladiators, he learned less than a week later. Luckily for him they wanted strong-looking opponents for their first round of amusement. Kaze found himself overlooked for two bulkier men who left looking scared and uncertain. He wondered if Rinkah had been summoned to join them, but he heard her gurgling stomach later that day, and so supposed it didn’t matter if she had been or not.

The men did not return.

It was only a matter of time before the rest of them were called out—that much was obvious. They made an effort to stretch and do a little exercise—as much as they could manage within their cell without attracting the attention of the guards at the end of the hall.

The only sound from Rinkah that any of them heard was that of her stomach, but it came as a relief because it meant she was alive.

The day did come when all three remaining men were herded into a room with Rinkah, handed weapons, and told that they were expected to fight for their lives.

“Make sure you put on a good show—this one’s for King Garon’s personal amusement.”

They looked at their brittle weapons, and then at one another. What were they to do but accept their predicament? Considering their location and the fact that King Garon was in attendance, Kaze felt sure that they would be lucky to live even if they did somehow overpower their opponents. But if they didn’t fight at all…they would most assuredly be killed.

At least they were being given a chance to go out honorably.

Kaze would have liked to speak to Rinkah before being ushered out into the arena, but he only had enough time for a glance; she looked smaller, somehow—tired. Her treasured mask was cracked on one side, and her face looked thinner. He wondered if he looked different, too.

When it was all over, the battle lost but not their lives, they were set free. Rinkah was angry about it; he didn’t have to ask why, since he could see it on her face and felt sure he knew exactly how she would phrase it, given half a chance to: she had been captured, imprisoned, beaten handily in combat, spared because she had been too pathetic to kill, and then forced to endure the enemy’s charity healing on top of it all.

She made a rather pathetic sight even now, he thought, dirty and cold and exhausted.

He waited for her to catch up, anyway, amazed they had been spared and unsure of what to do with all of the information he had acquired that day alone.

She eventually overtook him, slightly ragged breathing accompanying her slowing footsteps. The others lagged behind even further. He wondered if he ought to tell her his suspicions regarding Prince Corrin’s origins. Perhaps later, when they’d had time to rest and he’d had time to reconsider his own thinking.

“What happened to your cellmate?” he asked after a few minutes, both out of curiosity and to have something to talk about that was a little less personal than asking Rinkah how her time as a prisoner of war had treated her. It really wasn’t any of his business, after all.

She faltered slightly, expression opening and then quickly closing again as if to ward off something painful. “She died,” was all she said.

“Gladiator fight?” he asked, wondering if she’d been taken with the other two men who had not returned.

“She was sick,” she said, voice terse, “from the rain.”

He hadn’t heard any unusual coughing or sneezing, but it was entirely possible that it was a sleeping kind of sickness with a high fever and subsequent death. “I’m sorry,” he offered.

“Don’t be.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she almost snapped, refusing to lower her gaze.

He met it evenly. “I think it does.”

She broke eye contact and pushed through the snow in silence. After fifteen minutes he reached out for her. His fingers only barely grazed her arm, but she stopped anyway. “What?”

“I’m sorry. It’s none of my concern.”

She swallowed. “Yeah. It’s not.”

That hurt a little bit for no particular reason. He buried the thought. “I’m still sorry to hear that she died. Loss of life is never pleasant for anyone.”

Rinkah shrugged. “There are worse things than dying,” she told him, voice bitter.

He felt a pull in his chest and, for the first time in a long time, felt uncertain of what to do.

But he knew exactly what to say, even if she didn’t want to hear it.

“Rinkah…”

She cut him off impatiently as he gathered the words: “You can be sorry that she’s dead if you want. I don’t care. She talked too much, anyway. It’s fine.”

He doubted things were fine at all. Maybe her cellmate’s death had gotten to her more than she wanted to admit. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Well, what?”

“I’m glad you’re alive.”

She stared at him for a moment and pulled away, inclining her head. “We need shelter,” she said, ignoring his statement, “and food. And a plan.” She glanced behind them at the two other men who were still slowly trudging along several meters behind them. “Or none of us will make it back alive.”

* * *

 

Kaze was likable. Rinkah could admit it to herself. She had lost track of exactly how long the war had been going on, but they had been working together for much of her time in it. To her surprise, he was one of only a few people whose approaching figure didn’t irritate her.

In fact, sometimes she almost looked forward to talking to him.

But she hated it when he tried to feed her because she couldn’t understand it.

It took her weeks to come to the conclusion, but that had been weeks of dealing with him trying to pawn off food on her. Candy one minute, sweet bread the next, and then vegetables and jerky and she had no idea what he was going to manage to think of next. The side of her that loved to eat was pleased with everything he brought her, but the rest of her could not help but be wary of his motivations.

Was he only trying to be nice? Or was there something more sinister to it? He had never seemed the conniving type, at least not in a cruel way toward his own allies, but she hated attention being drawn to her awkward eating habits. If Oboro wasn’t making disgusted faces at the way she ate, then someone else was commenting on the amount of food she consumed.

The offer of food might have been acceptable if it were evenly spaced out and included him giving to others, but Kaze seemed to target her exclusively—and he had already guessed (aloud, no less) that her own eating habits were a sensitive subject for her.

Worse, Kaze was the only one who knew about their time together in Nohr, and his knowledge made his charity feel especially weighted.

Either he was mocking her or he didn’t think she could take care of herself. Both twisted her pride.

But there was never anything scornful about his expression or demeanor; in fact, when he offered her food he usually prefaced it with an excuse that he needed her help to finish it. A part of her couldn’t help but feel patronized by it—as if he truly thought she was so stupid she wouldn’t see through the act—but the rest of her appreciated it. It was kind of him to try to be considerate of her feelings. Sweet, even, that she would be his first thought when she had done nothing to really deserve it but watch his back.

All of her thoughts, carefully organized individually, jumbled together horribly when she felt his hand on her shoulder.

“Rinkah.”

Her initial start at his sudden touch melted quickly at the sound of his voice.  By the time she turned around, her expression looked quite neutral, but she almost expected to find him holding another sack of sweets.

He appeared to be empty-handed.

Though her stomach was disappointed by the lack of food, her pride allowed a smile to lift her expression “Yeah?”

Without another word he reached into his tunic and pulled out an apple. “This is for you.”

She squinted at it.

He smiled, perhaps a little exasperated with her hesitation. “Corrin and I picked a large basket,” he explained, “but they won’t last long—surely not until the dinner bell.”

He was right. Fresh fruit was not an everyday occurrence.

Tentatively, she reached out for it, fingers brushing against his.

“Thanks,” she said, words suddenly not quite as solid as they usually were.

He bowed, teasingly. “You’re welcome.”

He was only a few steps away before her heart lurched a little in her chest, and she called him back: “Kaze!”

He turned immediately, and to cover up the fact that for the life of her she couldn’t tell him what she actually wanted, she took a huge bite of the apple, teeth nearly sinking into the bitter core. It was juicy and sun-warmed and sweet, and she hated how much she liked it. But it bought her a moment to think, and after she’d swallowed it, she said: “You busy later?”

“Why?”

“I asked the question first.”

“I’m not especially busy.”

“Good. Well. I could use a training partner. If you want.”

He smiled again, skin at the corners of his eyes creasing. That wasn’t supposed to be nice to look at. She could have kicked herself if only it wouldn’t have made things worse. “Certainly.”

“All right,” she said, and took another bite, though this time she didn’t bother to swallow it completely before she finished speaking: “I’ll see you later, then.”

“Until then, Rinkah.”

She wondered why it was he’d said her name. Worse, she wondered why it made her face turn as red as the apple. Stupid! It didn’t even mean anything!

Instead she focused on deciding what to propose they do for training together. She wondered what Kaze would think about the training exercise Silas had recently taught her. What was it again…? Predator?

She would definitely win.

* * *

 

The texture of Rinkah’s hair had always been a small curiosity to Kaze, but now that he had his fingers buried in it, he found himself surprised that it was so light and soft.

And filled with burrs.

He tried not to smile, and tried a little less hard not to look down at Rinkah’s red face. He had never known anyone to blush as hard as she did, nor over so many things.

“Stop smirking,” she hissed at him, and frowned hard as he carefully dislodged a burr from her messy hair.

“You must admit that this is at least a little amusing.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her head hard, pulling his hands with her.

“Won’t you at least tell me what you were after?”

She huffed, partly, he knew, to cover up for the fact that having burrs pulled out of her hair was uncomfortable, but the rest of her annoyance was probably aimed at herself for getting into this mess in the first place, and at him for having found her in the middle of it all.

Admittedly, his first response hadn’t been the kindest; upon stumbling across her, he’d asked, “Isn’t it usually Setsuna who falls into traps?”

And she had hissed at him that it wasn’t a trap.

Though it had looked like one at first—the sudden step-off on the forest floor, the tangle of brush, the thorns. For some reason what bothered her the most were the burrs in her hair, though he supposed the three thorns that had gotten into her skin had been easy to remove by comparison.

He waited patiently for her response to his question, and after another silent thirty seconds, she admitted: “A deer.”

Probably a big one, or Rinkah wouldn’t have bothered with it. “Well, I’m sorry it got away,” he said. “Why don’t you take someone else with you next time?”

“You look too smug,” she told him even though she couldn’t possibly see his face the way she was sitting, now, “and if you’re not careful I may start to think you’re volunteering yourself for the job.”

“I was thinking of someone more capable,” he told her.

A flicker of interest entered her expression as she turned to look at him. “You’d do fine,” she said. “You know how to be quiet…when it suits you.”

“I suppose I do.”

She smirked. “Good, then you’ve just volunteered yourself.”

His fingers found another burr and he started working on it. “Have I?”

“Yes. Are you done yet? I’m tellin’ you—it had at least ten points, and it’ll be well worth catching.”

He tugged a little too hard on the burr he was holding, but she didn’t so much as flinch. He tossed it aside. “Two more,” he said, though it was a rough estimation considering how she’d half-mauled them trying to get them out herself just a few minutes earlier. The things were in pieces. “If you catch it you do realize you’ll have to carry it back, don’t you?”

“I can do it myself, but now that you’re here…” Her expression turned pleased. “Thanks for volunteering.”

“Of course.”

He took another few minutes picking the pieces of burrs out of her hair, and when he was done, he took the excuse to run his fingers through it. Either she didn’t realize what he was doing or she didn’t care, and considering Rinkah was more observant than most, he had to assume that it was the latter of the two.

It wasn’t until his fingers brushed the back of her neck that she seemed to snap into full awareness, red creeping into her cheeks as she turned to stare at him, one hand moving up into her hair. Her fingers brushed his but she didn’t pull away.

“You’re done?” she asked.

“I believe so.”

“Thanks.” And then, a moment later, “I was kidding, you know—about you volunteering yourself.”

He shook his head. “I don’t mind helping, but on one condition.”

She narrowed her eyes, expression suspicious. “What’s that?”

He loved how animated she always was despite her best attempts to be stoic. He forced away the smile that threatened to form. “That you share, of course.”

She rolled her eyes and gave him a playful shove as she scrambled to her feet. “I guess that’s fair,” she teased, “but that means next time it’ll be your turn to share with me.”

The surge of affection he felt at her remark made him want to kiss her, but any sort of kiss—even one to her cheek—would only make things between them awkward. She did not yet know how much he enjoyed sharing even the smallest things with her, and had yet to decide if he would ever tell her.

So he restricted his reaction to a soft smile and a hint of the truth: “It will be my pleasure, as always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because Rinkah and Kaze's time as prisoners of war was not touched upon much within the game, I did take some liberties here with time. I feel like _Fates_ fails to do a commendable job of conveying the passage of time and so any time mentioned here is personal headcanon only (and is trying to account for travel, Corrin's retrieval, and Garon making up his mind to use the prisoners for this particular purpose).
> 
> Harblkun pointed out that it was interesting that Kaze would pull burrs out with his bare hands, but growing up on a farm has normalized that for me (they are everywhere), so I apologize if it seems strange.


End file.
